You are reading this because you have either purchased a pro theme after using one of our free themes or inquiring about the process to upgrade from free to pro. In either case, thank you for choosing Slocum Themes!
Before Upgrading
Here are a couple of common questions we get from customers before upgrading:
I modified the code on the free version, what do I do?
There are a couple of different ways that you could have modified the code on the free theme. You could have made changes to the CSS on a stylesheet or edited one of the PHP files to differ from the original theme. If you modified any of the styling or PHP, make sure that the modifications are on a child theme and not on the parent theme.
If you need help creating a child theme, please reference our guide on how to create a child theme. If you need help beyond this, consider our full-service theme install.
What will happen to my existing content?
WordPress handles the actual content of your website via your MySQL database. Luckily, our theme installs do not impact the database, they merely impact the modifications that may have been made to CSS or PHP, outlined above. Do not worry about losing your images, data, posts, or page content when upgrading our themes.
To Upgrade your Theme
1. Once you have purchased your theme and are looking to upgrade, the first step is to download and install the theme.
2. When the theme has been installed, you will need to activate the theme to complete the upgrade. You can do this by selecting activate if installing from the back-end of WordPress or by navigating to Appearance > Themes and activating the Pro theme.
3. If you were previously using a child theme on the free version of the theme, there is one more step to take…
Changes to your child theme CSS Stylesheet
When you upgrade from free to pro, you should not have to modify any PHP. For the CSS, however, you will have to point the Template for the CSS Style sheet to the new theme name. In the case of “Modern Business”, the new theme file name is modern-business-pro, so you will want to adjust this on your existing child theme (see image below).
Make sure that once the proper change has been made to your child theme’s stylesheet (detailed above) that you activate the Child Theme as the theme of choice under the Themes section, not the actual parent theme.
Congratulations!
Once the new theme is installed, activated, and the CSS stylesheet has been modified (if necessary), you are done! When you have a spare moment, make sure to check out the improved options in the Appearance > Theme Options section! You can check out all of your new features like:
- One-Click Child Themes
- Custom Page Layouts for categories and custom post types
- Our Help/Support tab, should you have any issues with the theme or questions on functionality
- Scripts and Styles for the theme
- More color options
- Show/hiding the copyright section, author information, and more!
A Special Note about Menu Navigation: In some special cases, we have seen issues with custom menus getting changed after upgrading our themes. Fortunately, this is a very easy to fix until we solve the bug. To fix this error, go to Appearance > Menu and click on the “Manage Locations” tab at the top. All of your previous menu sections will still be here. Select the one you want to put in the top navigation or primary navigation and save your changes. All set!